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‘How does a rat know what a mystical gate looks like?’ Fidick asked. His curious expression made him look like the innocent child I’d first met in the Ascendant’s camp– almost. The broken nose I’d left him with helped remind me that he knew more than any of us what was really happening here, and the fact that he was still keeping his knowledge and his part in this a secret meant he would surely betray us before the night was out.

Aradeus took his customary delight in explaining the marvels of rodents. ‘Our furry cartographers are following lines of magical force to their source. Rats, you see, are the most sensitive of all animals to magical emanations. A gate between planes will emit waves of mystical force that they can track. Once they’ve found the most potent—’

He froze.

‘What is it?’ I asked, staring at his hand.

Aradeus pointed to several red dots on the grey leather. They were twitching and hopping about like tiny fleas. ‘These are living beings.’

‘Seven of them,’ Alice said, leaning past me to peer closer. ‘Must be the brothers.’

‘Yes,’ Aradeus said, but he looked confused. ‘But see the lines. . .? They’re changing.’

He was right. The little trails left by the rats were becoming concentric spirals that were twisting tighter and tighter around the red dots.

‘Does that mean what I think it means?’ Corrigan asked.

Aradeus nodded. ‘The rats are. . . they’re converging on the Seven Brothers.’

Galass came closer. ‘But won’t the brothers notice a dozen rats so close to th—?’

Tiny flames erupted all over Aradeus’ glove. He howled in pain and tore off the glove, waving his hand wildly as he dropped the still-burning glove into the sewage below us.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

Aradeus’ hung his head in sorrow, his shoulders slumping. ‘They slaughtered the scouts I sent to find the gates. Every last one of them.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Galass said, putting a hand on the rat mage’s shoulder.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Corrigan swore. ‘They wererats. Besides, the stupid little bastards didn’t even find the gates– they just ran up to the nearest humans. Probably got blasted begging for cheese.’

Aradeus spun on his heel and cocked his fist, but before he could punch Corrigan in the face, Alice and I pulled the two of them apart.

‘Don’t,’ I told Corrigan. ‘We haven’t time for this. We need a new plan to find the gates if we want to—’

‘We’ve already found the gates,’ Shame said.

She’d been standing off by herself, looking so uninterested in our affairs that I’d wondered how much use she was actually going to be. But now she was staring up the tunnel ahead of us, an unmistakeable look of wonder in her golden angelic eyes.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘The rats– they did exactly as Aradeus asked them: they found the breaches between this realm and that of the Pandorals.’ She turned to me and her golden eyes turned black;an involuntary instinct of angelics when their preternatural senses warn them that things are about to go very badly. ‘The Seven Brothers were neverbuildingthe gates. They werebecomingthem.’

I gaped, trying to make sense of what this meant, and how in any hell we were supposed to stop living portals to a magical realm.

‘Good,’ Fidick said, and skipped ahead of us, gleefully splashing his way through the river of filth and decay into the darkness that led up to the fortress. ‘The fun part’s about to begin.’

Chapter 44

Complications

We abandoned our previous plodding, methodical pace and all caution as we ran up the sewer tunnel. We didn’t bother with even cursory checks for traps and barriers, mystical or mundane. Time was of the essence, now, even if we didn’t all agree which direction we should be running.

‘This is absolutely nuts,’ Corrigan said, swearing savagely as he grabbed for my arm, trying to hold me back. ‘You can’t expect us to fight the brothers any more. Didn’t you hear the angelic?They’rethe fucking gates!’

‘I don’t understand,’ Galass said, gripping the hem of her long silver gown to keep it from trailing in the muck. Not that it really mattered; she was as soaked in sewage as the rest of us. ‘What difference does it matter whether the gates exist inside or outside the Seven Brothers?’

Yet another example of what a piss-poor job you’ve done teaching her the fundamentals of what it means to be a wonderist.